Digital Commons Network^™

Feral Horses And Native Ungulates: Evaluating The Potential For Competition In Predator–Prey Communities Of Alberta’S Upper Foothills, Birch Gano

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Feral herbivores are expanding in range and numbers globally, yet their community-level effects in ecosystems are poorly resolved. We evaluated whether feral horses reshape predator–prey–vegetation dynamics in Alberta’s Upper Foothills, Canada, through two pathways; i) potential exploitative competition for forage and ii) apparent competition via shared predators. We combined fecal DNA metabarcoding with remote wildlife cameras to quantify diets, spatiotemporal co-occurrence, and the role of horses in carnivore diet. We analyzed 241 ungulate scats (feral horses, elk, bighorn sheep, cattle, moose, and deer), 96 combined camera-years at 23 sites, and 190 carnivore scats (wolves, cougars, coyotes, bears) from 2023–2025. The …

Integrating Perspectives Of People With Aphasia: A Holistic Approach To Community Aphasia Groups Within An Intensive Comprehensive Aphasia Program, Mckinlee A. Mihelish

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Introduction: People with aphasia (PWA) experience chronic communication deficits that impact daily life. Community Aphasia Groups (CAGs) are commonly used to address these challenges and have demonstrated psychosocial and communicative benefits; however, they lack standardized structure and are implemented with variability across settings. Additionally, much of the existing research focuses on group-level outcomes rather than participant-driven priorities, limiting clinicians’ ability to tailor interventions. This study examined what PWA want from CAG participation and how these priorities may change over time.

Methods: This quantitative study investigated priority changes among PWA participating in a CAG within a summer 2025 Intensive Comprehensive Aphasia …

From Environment To Population Dynamics: Integrating Physiology, Morphology, And Demography In A Montane Migratory Bird, Beverly Sunshine Domschot

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Environmental variation shapes population dynamics by influencing how individuals acquire and allocate resources. However, the pathways linking environmental conditions to population-level outcomes remain difficult to resolve because they operate across multiple levels of biological organization. Traits such as physiology and morphology mediate these relationships by shaping how individuals respond to challenges and convert resources into survival and reproduction. Physiological traits can change rapidly in response to short-term conditions, whereas morphological traits reflect longer-term processes related to performance and energy balance. Despite their complementary roles, these traits are typically studied in isolation, limiting our ability to understand how environmental conditions propagate …

The Stabilization Of 11fn3 With Emcast, Kassandra Lee Boshae

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The EmCAST webserver (www.EmCAST.org) provides a mechanism where mutations that stabilize a protein can be predicted based on overlapping structural preference with amino acid sequence. Previously, it had been thought that surface mutations to proteins would offer only minimal stabilization. Many stabilization methods available rely on multiple amino acid substitutions, often with poor results. We hypothesize that stabilization can occur with a minimal number of surface exposed residue substitutions, without compromising the structure of the protein of interest. Previous validation of EmCAST has been done with α-helical domains. This dissertation provides important validation of the ability of EmCAST to stabilize …

Embodied Women’S Health In The Pacific: Biocultural Pathways Of Hormones, Immunity, And Reproduction, Courtney Callidora Manthey

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This dissertation examines women’s health through a biocultural framework that integrates biological anthropology, medical anthropology, and public health, with a central focus on the Pacific. It advances embodiment theory as a unifying approach for understanding how lived experience becomes biologically incorporated across the life course, shaping reproductive, endocrine, and immune outcomes. Grounded in research in Sāmoa and situated within broader comparative contexts in the United States and Amazonian populations, this work argues that women’s health cannot be fully understood through biomedical indicators alone, but must instead be interpreted within historically, culturally, and environmentally embedded Pacific contexts and beyond. The dissertation …

“What’S Gender Got To Do With It?” The Chatelaine, Artifact Analysis, And The Presumption Of Gender, Dane Alexander Williams

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The use of diagnostic artifacts to determine gender when analysis of skeletal remains is uncertain is a long-standing practice within archaeology. Material culture is noted, including weapons and personal items used exclusively by a specific gender within a culture, allowing for possible gender determination during excavation or review. However, issues arise when diagnostic artifacts are found not to be used solely by one gender within these cultures. Biases on the part of researchers, unintentional though they may be, are a determining factor. This, in turn, affects the public's views on history. Examples of this can be seen in our current …

Lake As Body: Ecofeminism And Animacy At The Great Salt Lake, Shae Barber

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Water shapes cultural, social, and ecological systems. Yet, dominant economic, political, and academic frameworks often treat water as a backdrop or passive resource, ignoring it as an active participant in meaning-making and relationship-building. Viewing water as “nonliving” obscures how it participates in and co-creates relationships, limiting understanding about impacts of and responses to climate change and environmental degradation.

This thesis takes a mixed-methods and participatory approach including semi-structured interview, photovoice, and participatory mapping to examine relational practices between environmental advocates and the Great Salt Lake, a desiccating saline lake in Utah, U.S. As the lake continues to decline, dominant Western …

Evolution Of A Nitrogen-Fixing Endosymbiont And Integration With Its Diatom Host, Heidi Elizabeth Abresch

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Endosymbiosis, where one cell lives inside of a different cell, is ubiquitous in nature and has enormous impacts on the ecology and evolution of both the host and the endosymbiont [1, 2]. These relationships exist along a continuum ranging from facultative—where both partners are able to live independently—to completely obligate—where partners can only survive in the presence of the other. The most famous examples being the chloroplast and mitochondrion [3]. After hundreds of millions or even billions of years of coevolution, highly-integrated endosymbionts are coordinated with the host on the genetic, metabolic, and cellular levels, but we do not understand …

Flight Control And Costs In Unsteady And Turbulent Airflows In Ringneck Doves (Streptopelia Risoria), Rémy Alexandre Delplanche

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The aerosphere is a highly dynamic environment where turbulence (irregular, chaotic changes in airflow velocity) and unsteady airflows (variations in flow velocity with time at a given spatial point, e.g. gusts) are ubiquitous [1,2]. These airflows are known to perturb man-made aircraft [3,4], and are thus expected to challenge biological fliers such as birds. However, birds display remarkable flight control in turbulent and gusty conditions, suggesting that they have evolved mechanisms to resist aerial perturbations. This in-flight stability is broadly attributed to wing morphing, the capacity for wing shape and orientation to be altered during flight, yet how morphable wings …

Á’Po’Taki Iiyika’Kimaa Work/Try Hard For Such A Time As This, Misamsai’Piaakíí Longtime Charging Woman Kimberly Lynn Paul

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This body of work adds to a recent shift in the academic landscape, valuing interdisciplinary research and Indigenous worldview. Predominant is the reversal of extractive research norms within Indigenous populations and the biosystems they steward, instead claiming Piikani (Blackfeet) led community-needs-based research valuing Indigenous data sovereignty, research methodologies, ethics, equity, and Indigenous empowerment. This research proffers requisite historical information providing the ‘why’ context, followed by three of the author’s studies: in toxic dumping, food sovereignty, and Piikani well-being. Under an environmental justice framework, the first study presents a cursory investigation of decades-long illicit toxic waste disposal reports linked to observed …

Evolutionary Genetics Of Wolbachia Density Variation And Effects On Host Fitness, John Paul Statz

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Symbiotic interactions are widespread across the tree of life, and many insects associate with vertically transmitted intracellular bacteria whose fitness is tied to host reproduction. Because these endosymbionts transmit through the maternal line, selection often favors traits that increase the production and success of transmitting females. Over time, endosymbionts can evolve functions such as nutrient provisioning, defense against predators and pathogens, and contributions to environmental stress tolerance, thereby shaping host ecology and evolution. Yet these effects depend critically on the abundance and localization of endosymbionts within host tissues. This dissertation examines these processes in Wolbachia, the most common known animal …

The Evolution Of Ritual Violence And Identity At Paquimé, Lacy Jaide Hazelwood

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The prehistoric site of Paquimé, located in the Casas Grandes region of northern Mexico, was a major regional center characterized by its complex sociopolitical organization, distinctive architecture, and evidence of ritualized behavior. Previous research has documented skeletal trauma and processing patterns consistent with ritual violence within the Paquimé skeletal assemblage, including human sacrifice and cannibalism. However, questions remain regarding the identities of these individuals and the reasoning behind their selection for targeted violence by the community. Did an individual’s age, biological sex, kinship affiliations, and/or migrant status predispose them to these ritually violent acts? To address these gaps, this dissertation …

High Algal Biomass Is Decoupled From Metabolism In The Gallatin River, Cora Mae Steinbach

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Assessing eutrophication in rivers is difficult compared to lakes and coastal waters, because most algal biomass occurs on the riverbed and flows interact and co-vary with production (Biggs and Close, 1989; Bernhardt et al., 2018). Riverine eutrophication is typically assessed using algal biomass and water column nutrients (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2000), but biomass is highly variable and labor-intensive to measure, while nutrient concentrations often underestimate enrichment due to rapid biological uptake (Dodds and Smith, 2016). Reach-scale river metabolism can help evaluate long-term functional change in rivers recovering from nutrient enrichment (Arroita et al., 2019; Jankowski et al., 2021; Diamond …

Race, Sexual Danger, And The Moral Logic Of Punishment In The Registry Era, Edith Meade

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Sex offender registries represent one of the most expansive and punitive criminal justice interventions in modern American history, yet public support for these policies remainsunderi nvestigated. Scholarly debate has questioned whether punitive attitudes toward sexual offenders reflect principled moral judgments, racial threat perceptions, or both. This study addresses that question by examining how offender race, offender age, offense severity, victim age, and offender-victim relationship shape public attitudes toward sexual offenders in the contemporary registry era. Drawing on theories of racialized sexual threat, group position, and retributive impulses, the study uses a nationally representative conjoint survey experiment administered through YouGov (N …

The Experience Of A Single Parent Participating In Child-Parent Relationship Therapy: An Instrumental Single-Case Study, Matthew Nicholas Schramm

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Traditional family structures in the United States have shifted significantly, with single-parent households facing systemic barriers that increase parental stress and strain the parent-child relationship. As this bond is critical for healthy child development, accessible mental health support is essential for these families (Parache et al., 2023).

Child Parent Relationship Therapy (CPRT), a ten-week evidence-based program, strengthens this bond by training caregivers to use play as a therapeutic tool (Landreth & Bratton, 2020). This instrumental single case study (Stake, 1995) examined one single-parent's experience of CPRT delivered in a condensed four-week telehealth format, addressing the limited representation of single-parent households …

An Ecological-Evolutionary Investigation Of Phenotypic, Genetic, And Environmental Variation And Correlations Among Reproductive Traits Of Tall Goldenrod (Solidago Altissima), Michael J. Wise, Daniel Lavy, David E. Carr, Warren G. Abrahamson Ii

Faculty Journal Articles

Although fitness-related traits are expected to be under strong selection, traits related to reproduction are often quite variable within plant populations. We used data from two large greenhouse experiments to quantify phenotypic, genetic, and environmental variation, as well as genetic tradeoffs that might help explain the maintenance of withinpopulation variation in four traits related to sexual or vegetative reproduction in tall goldenrod (Solidago altissima). The goldenrod population exhibited high levels of both phenotypic and genetic variation for capitulum (flower head) number and size, seed production, and rhizome growth. Significant negative genetic correlations were present between the number of capitula and …

The Impact Of Ai Recommendation Features On Consumer Purchasing Decisions In E-Commerce Environments, Abdullah Alrumi

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Artificial intelligence recommendation features such as visual search, real-time offers, chatbot interactions, and generative recommendations have become central to e-commerce. A key gap remains because most studies focus on purchase intention instead of actual decisions and examine these AI features separately. This study addresses this gap by asking: What is the impact of AI recommendation features on consumer purchasing decisions in e-commerce environments? Using a sequential mixed-methods design in the Saudi Arabian e-commerce market, the quantitative phase surveyed 343 online shoppers analyzed with PLS-SEM, while the qualitative phase involved 15 interviews analyzed thematically with ATLAS.ti. The conceptual model was informed …

(R)Evolutionary Cultural Literacy: Pauli Murray’S Boundary-Crossing Tripartite Pedagogy, Lorise Ann Diamond

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Civil rights lawyer, poet, activist, questioning, and Episcopal priest Pauli Murray spent seven decades generating legal doctrine, autobiography, poetry, and institutional redesign across some of the most hostile yet fecund terrain American public life produced. Scholarship across rhetoric and writing studies, cultural studies, Black feminism, and critical pedagogy has theorized literacy, movement, and commons-making as separate concerns. What the field of cultural literacy lacks is a framework that holds those concerns together, reads them through a focused body of texts, and translates them into a transferable pedagogy applicable across academic, civic, and institutional settings. This dissertation argues that cultural literacy …

Effect Of Female Employment On Household Expenditure In Bangladesh, Fatema Binte Sharif

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Female labor force participation (FLFP) in Bangladesh has increased from 29.2% in 2005–06 to 42.8% in 2022, raising important questions about household resource allocation. This study examines the impact of female employment on household expenditure patterns and challenges the traditional unitary model of decision-making. It focuses on how income controlled by women influences spending across essential and non-essential categories. The analysis uses data from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics. This research employs Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SURE) approach to estimate budget shares for food, housing, health, education, clothing, and transport. The study …

Retirement: Broaching Intersectional Identities And Aging, Nichole Tiggs Angieri, Ericka Cables, Mary Martha Abernathy

Adultspan Journal

Broaching intersectional identities in retirement is a crucial counseling skill that fosters trust and connection with older adults as they navigate this major life transition. Using Person-Centered, Trauma-Informed (PCTI) and Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT) as complements to broaching, these theories provide both relational and cultural attunement to facilitate healing and well-being in this specialized population. Through didactic information and case studies, the purpose of this conceptual paper is to provide counselors and counselor educators with insight into broaching intersectional identities in retirement and to advocate for further research on aging and identity. The implications for clinical practice include providing an integrated …

A Systematic Review Of Psychosocial Interventions For Improving Well-Being In Retired Adults, Sakir Yilmaz, Mustafa Filiz

Adultspan Journal

The transition to retirement is a critical biopsychosocial stage that often brings challenges such as shifting roles and reduced income, which may lead to psychological distress. In this study, we systematically synthesized quantitative evidence on the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions in enhancing well-being (increase in positive functioning) among retired adults. A comprehensive search across PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Cochrane was completed in October 2025. This was supplemented by Google Scholar and reference list screening, identifying 5,945 database records and 123 additional sources. After screening and eligibility assessment, seven studies met the inclusion criteria. Across these studies, interventions produced …

Endothelin-1 In The Failing Fontan: Pathobiology, Precision Therapeutics, And Future Trial Design, Iman Maiza

Department of Pediatrics Faculty Publications

The Fontan circulation, devised as definitive palliation for single-ventricle congenital heart disease, imposes systemic venous hypertension, loss of pulmonary arterial pulsatility, and restricted preload reserve. These hemodynamic trade-offs progressively injure the pulmonary vasculature, liver, and lymphatic system, producing late morbidities including elevated pulmonary vascular resistance, Fontan-associated liver disease (FALD), protein-losing enteropathy, and arrhythmias. Endothelin-1 (ET-1), a potent vasoconstrictor and profibrotic mediator, plausibly unifies these complications. Mechanistic studies demonstrate ET-1 upregulation in failed Fontan lungs, activating PLC–Ca²⁺, RhoA/ROCK, and MAPK/ERK cascades to drive vasoconstriction and remodeling. In cirrhotic livers, ET-1 localizes to stellate cells, promoting contraction and fibrogenesis, mechanisms biologically relevant …

Multiple Changepoint Detection For Non-Gaussian Time Series, Robert Lund, Thomas J. Fisher, Norou Diawara, Michael Wehner

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

This article combines methods from existing techniques to identify multiple changepoints in non‐Gaussian autocorrelated time series. A transformation is used to convert a Gaussian series into a non‐Gaussian series, enabling penalized likelihood methods to handle non‐Gaussian scenarios. When the marginal distribution of the data is continuous, the methods essentially reduce to the change of variables formula for probability densities. When the marginal distribution is count‐oriented, Hermite expansions and particle filtering techniques are used to quantify the scenario. Simulations demonstrating the efficacy of the methods are given and two data sets are analyzed: 1) the proportion of home runs hit by …

Tezepelumab's Effects On Patient-Reported Symptoms In Severe Asthma, Overall And With History Of Comorbid Chronic Rhinosinusitis With Nasal Polyps (Crswnp), Njira L. Lugogo, Joseph K. Han, Anju T. Peters, Stella E. Lee, Monica Kraft, Mary Kay Margolis, Sonia F. Shenoy, Nicole Martin, Shradha Chandarana, Christopher S. Ambrose

Department of Otolaryngology (ENT) Faculty Publications

Background

Tezepelumab (an anti-thymic stromal lymphopoietin monoclonal antibody) treatment resulted in reduced exacerbations and improved sino-nasal symptoms and health-related quality of life in patients with severe uncontrolled asthma (SUA) and chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP) in the NAVIGATOR study.

Objective

To evaluate the effect of tezepelumab versus placebo on sleep disturbances, activity levels, and physical exertion tolerance in NAVIGATOR patients with SUA overall and in those with past medical history of comorbid CRSwNP.

Methods

Patients (12-80 years old) with SUA were randomized to receive tezepelumab 210 mg or placebo subcutaneously every 4 weeks for 52 weeks. Patient responses to …

Evaluating Species At Risk In Data-Limited Fisheries: A Productivity-Susceptibility Analysis For Marine Aquarium Fish, Gabrielle A. Baillargeon, Alice A. Wynn, Jemelyn Grace P. Baldisimo, Michael F. Tlusty, Andrew L. Rhyne

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

The marine aquarium trade (MAT) is a significant global industry harvesting millions of wild-caught, live coral reef fishes for public and private aquaria markets in the United States and Europe annually, while supporting fisher livelihoods in the Indo-Pacific. This diverse and species-rich trade is considered data-limited, creating barriers to quantifying the current and future socio-ecological sustainability of the fishery. We present a revised and expanded productivity–susceptibility analysis (PSA) that serves as a holistic risk assessment to estimate the vulnerability of marine aquarium fish to overfishing. Our global analysis includes 306 species that are actively in trade. Improvements to the PSA …

Does Fishery Management For Groupers (Teleostei: Epinephelidae) Protect Them Effectively? Context From The Iucn's Red List Of Threatened Species, Sean T. Fennessy, Christi Linardich, Kevin Rhodes, Joao P. Barreiros, David Pollard, Eloy Sosa-Cordero, Felicia Coleman, Alfonso Aguilar-Perera, Christopher R. Malinowski, Thierry Brulé, Pedro Afonso, Kayan Ma, Min Liu, Muktha Menon, Colin Wen, Stanley K. H. Shea, Sean N. Porter, Matthew Craig, Yvonne Sadovy De Mitcheson

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Worldwide, groupers (Epinephelidae) are commercially valued fishes, which also play key ecological roles on tropical and subtropical reefs. In 2007 and 2016, the IUCN's Groupers and Wrasses Specialist Group assessed all 160+ grouper species, with 17 of these being identified as threatened in 2016 and the major threat factor being overexploitation. Our present study aimed to identify whether management measures (MMs) for previously assessed groupers were established, whether these measures aligned with IUCN's Red List categories, and whether they effectively protect grouper populations. Experts in grouper biology and management assigned scores per grouper species based on the extent to which …

Three Decades Of Classifying Threatened Species: Lessons Learned From And About The Iucn Red List Criteria For Quantifying Extinction Risk, H. Resit Akçakaya, E. J. Milner-Gulland, Mike Hoffmann, Helen M. Regan, Ilona Naujokaitis-Lewis, Andre E. Punt, Kevin J. Gaston, David A. Keith, Stuart H. M. Butchart, Simon N. Stuart, Nigel J. Collar, Moreno Di Marco, Monika Bohm, Alex J. Berryman, David P. Mallon, Axel Hochkirch, Nicholas K. Dulvy, Malin Rivers, Thomas M. Brooks, James R. S. Westrip, Jonathan Paul Rodriguez, Craig Hilton-Taylor, Janet Scott, Simon Tarr, Sophie H. Ledger, Christi Linardich

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the most widely used global system for assessing species' extinction risk, has become a foundational source of information for conservation management, policy and research. Since the adoption of quantitative extinction risk criteria more than three decades ago, the Red List has expanded substantially in scope and influence, informing decisions ranging from species conservation and protected area designation to international agreements, corporate risk assessments and global biodiversity indicators. Given its central role, maintaining scientific rigour, transparency and trust in the Red List system is essential. Feedback from users, emerging from evolving applications and scientific …

A Comparison Of F/Taf And F/Tdf As Hiv Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis In A Predominantly Cisgender Women Population In East And South Africa: A Randomised, Factorial, Non-Inferiority Trial, Sheena Mccormack, David Dunn, Sylvia Kusemererwa, Patricia Munseri, Nishanta Singh, Wiston William, Gertrude Mutonyi, Henry Bern, Lauriane Goldwirt, Cherry Kingsley, Arne Kkroidl, Christian Holm Hansen, Song Ding, Rachel Kawuma, Mary Amondi, Ubaldo Bahemuka, Deus Buma, Daniel Clutterbuck, Zakir Gaffoor, Angus Jennings, Agricola Joachim, Ayoub Kakande, Berna Kalanzi, Abisai Kisinda, Mabela Matsoso, Thomas Miller, Neetha Mmedsci Morar, Jacqueline Musau, Jane Nabbuto, Ayanda Nzuza, Doreen Pamba, Simona Salomone, Thandiwe Sithole, Edith Tarimo, Kubashni Woeber, Kundai Chinyenze, Glenda Gray, Eligius Lyamuya, Muhammad Bakari, Said Aboud, Lucas Maganga, Gustavo Doncel, Janet Seeley, Jonathan Weber, Pontiano Kaleebu, Julie Fox, Eugene Ruzagira, On Behalf Of The Prepvacc Study Group

CONRAD Publications

Background:

F/TAF was shown to be non-inferior to F/TDF as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in men, but approval was not extended to cisgender women. We report the results of PrEPVacc, in which a predominantly female population was randomly allocated to receive daily oral F/TDF or F/TAF for ∼6 months within a HIV-1 prophylactic vaccine trial.

Setting:

Five study sites in three African countries (Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa).

Methods:

The two regimens were compared by the averted infections ratio (AIR) - the proportion of infections averted by F/TAF relative to F/TDF. The counterfactual HIV incidence, an essential component of this metric, was …

Proof-Of-Concept Development And Preclinical Evaluation Of A Microarray Patch Platform For Codelivery Of Multiple Broadly Neutralizing Antibodies For Hiv Prevention, M. Melissa Peet, Vivek Agrahari, Parbeen Singh, Lam Luong Hoai Nguyen, Louise A. Ouattara, Eun Sung Yang, Carolina Herrera, Amarendra Pegu, Theodore C. Pierson, Thanh D. Nguyen, Gustavo F. Doncel

CONRAD Publications

Broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) are advancing as a preventative or treatment option for HIV infection, but currently must be administered parenterally, typically as a large injection or infusion, an invasive method of delivery, especially for the pediatric population. Here, we present proof-of-concept data on a minimally invasive microneedle (MN) patch platform codelivering three bnAbs, PGT121, VRC07-523LS, and PGDM1400LS, from separate MN patch units or pixels. Each 1 cm² patch pixel, fabricated via solvent casting, contained ∼2 mg of one bnAb. In ex vivo porcine skin tests, the MNs effectively penetrated the skin. When tested in vitro in PBS buffer, MNs …

Self-Assembly Of Anti-Inflammatory Peptide Amphiphiles For Mucosal Health, Maria José Gómara, Ignacio Pérez-Pomeda, Ramon Pons, Paul Ziprin, Carolina Herrera, Isabel Haro

CONRAD Publications

Broad spectrum anti-inflammatory peptide amphiphiles (AIF-PAs) have been developed as an innovative strategy for the treatment of chronic mucosal inflammation and the prevention of HIV transmission. Novel lipopeptides based on two linear sequences of anti-inflammatory peptides were obtained by solid-phase peptide chemistry. In a pilot study, ex vivo exposure of colorectal tissue explants from Crohn's disease patients to AIF-PAs induced a downregulation of the proinflammatory profile. Furthermore, the HIV inhibitory potency of AIF-PAs was evaluated ex vivo in colorectal tissue explants, obtaining sub-micromolar IC₅₀ values. Characterization of AIF-PAs self-aggregation in aqueous solution revealed that the net charge distribution within the …